SAP HANA v1.0 SPS4 Whats New?

SAP BI RELATED PRODUCT ROADMAP A SNAPSHOT VIEW!!

SAP HANA v1.0 SPS4 was released in May, 2012. Several customers using SAP S A P B I T O O L S R O A D M A P
ECC and new to SAP ECC around the World have added SAP HANA & HANA AS OF 06/2012
DB for BW to their corporate IT strategy. Below is a list of DO NOT MISS
features available in SAP HANA v1.0 SPS4. 1) SAP HANA is the preferred in-
memory MPP (massive parallel
A DXC ( HANA Direct Extractor Connection): A Game Changing data extraction interface that processing) data mart for high
enables SAP ECC data extraction on near real-time basis using SAP BW extractors (aka data sources) volume and high performance
available within SAP ECC without the need for SLT or Data Services directly into SAP HANA. A demanding business applications
standalone BW system is not required with full support to SAP ECC real-
time data replication. Presently, the
B SAP Visual Intelligence: A BO Explorer like web based tool with support to geo-maps and HANA SAP HANA database option can
hierarchies that provides ad-hoc reporting with direct access to high volume SAP HANA data only be used in the SAP BW 7.3
(calculation views, analytical views, tables, etc.) without the need for a Universe or an intermediate layer environment and is available in GA
(general availability) version
C Fuzzy (aka Fault-tolerant) Search Feature: The Fuzzy search feature provides a new string
comparison option that internally uses a system generated TF/IDF (term frequency / inverse document 2) SAP BWA (aka BW
Accelerator); BWA 7.3 will be the
frequency) score based search. Customization to Fuzzy search with performance trace is available within
final release for BWA. SAP HANA
SPS4 to speed up the fuzzy search as per different business needs
DB will Super cede BWA in the
SAP BW environment for BW
D - R Programming Language Integration: R Language is an open source programming language applications requiring high
available for the SAP HANA environment that can used to develop applications that require statistical performance
computing and graphical features. The R language exploits the SAP HANA high performance features
such as MPP (massive parallel processing) and column store 3) SAP BW-IP(Integrated planning)
is the financial business planning
tool with full support to SAP
E Enhanced HANA Variables & Input Parameter Options: From SPS4 variables can be assigned to
HANA for IT driven planning
an attribute, which is used for filtering in the where clause. Variables can be applied to attributes of
applications
analytic and calculation views.
4) SAP BW-BPS (Business
F - Flat-file Import Tool (aka Data from local file wizard): A new tool in SAP HANA SPS4 that Planning and Simulation) SAP
provides a straight forward way to load flat files into SAP HANA without having the need to create control BPC-NW will super cede BW-BPS
in the long-run
files and scripts. The supported file types are .csv, .xls, and .xlsx.

5) SAP BPC-NW will be the

G SAP HANA Client for Microsoft Excel: To access the SAP HANA database from Microsoft Excel,
preferred financial business
you can now install and use the 32-bit SAP HANA client for Microsoft Excel planning tool for power user/
business driven planning
H Other Noteworthy Features: 1 - Enhanced Hierarchy Option, 2 - New Tool for HANA DB applications. SAP HANA support
Information Access - (Next Generation Data mining tool) and more for BPC-NW is in the pipeline

Rama Shankar
SAP CERTIFIED BI CONSULTANT

Rama Shankar is an SAP BW, SAP BOBJ (incl. BO Explorer & BODS Data Services) and HANA consultant with extensive experience with SAP ECC (incl.
APO-SCM, Sales, Finance, FSCM, HR-WFM, Project Systems, SAP Retail, etc.) full lifecycle BI implementations. Rama has worked on several end-to-end
implementations of SAP BOBJ for SAP BW (incl. v7.3), SAP HANA, MS BI and Oracle DB environments in the utilities, retail, pharma, state agencies and
beverages industries.
Disclaimer: This document illustrates Ramas individual recommendations on SAP BODS, HANA BI 4X only. Info reliable but not warranted. Copyright 2012. All Rights Reserved. Info as of JUNE-2012.